Apr 1, 2010

April Fools day is an appropriate time to report on what has been called the greatest student prank of all time.

A team of a dozen engineering students executed what was probably the most ingenious student prank ever.

The year was 1958. The place was Gonville & Caius College which is a part of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England.

In June 1958, Cambridge awoke to see a car perched at the apex of an inaccessible rooftop, looking as if it were driving across the skyline.

It was an Austin Seven van that appeared out of nowhere on top of the Senate House roof.

The spectacle made headlines around the world and left police, firefighters and civil defense units battling for nearly a week to hoist the vehicle back down before giving in and taking it to pieces with blowtorches.

The shadowy group of engineering students who executed the stunt were never identified and the mystery of how they did it has baffled successive undergraduates and provided fodder for countless tourist guides.

Now, 50 years later, the group reunited to disclose their identities and reveal how they winched an Austin Seven to the top of the university's 70ft-high Senate House.

A diagram at the link below shows how the stunt was pulled off by the twelve students divided into three groups.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) said at a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week that he fears sending additional Marines to Guam, the island will become so overpopulated that it will "capsize" and fall over into the ocean.

Was Congressman Johnson serious? If so he must be about as dumb as a rock.

Was Congressman Johnson was being facetious? If so, taking up half the length of the video to describe Guam as a small island means that he may only be half as dumb as a rock.

The FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List debuted on March 14, 1950, and has become a fixture of American culture.

The prototype for what would become the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list began with a newspaper story by reporter James Donovan, who asked the bureau: "Who are the 10 toughest guys you are looking for?"

His article appeared on the front page of the Washington Daily News in 1949 and encouraged the FBI to make the list an official crime-fighting tool.

Since the list's inception in 1950, some 494 fugitives have been counted among the worst of the worst.

More than a year into Obama's Administration -- and three months after the Nigerian underwear bomber came close to blowing a U.S. airliner out of the sky over Detroit -- the nation still doesn't have a top cop at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

Why is the Obama Administration having such a tough time filling this vital slot?

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Harding took himself out of the running last Friday.

This was another setback for Obama after his first choice withdrew in January because he faced a tough confirmation struggle in Congress.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (pictured) was selected early as Obama formed his administration.

Is the outspoken Napolitano the main reason for the difficulty in finding a TSA chief? She is the one who said “the system worked” after the Nigerian underwear bomber nearly blew up an airliner over Detroit.

Perhaps when candidates learn that their main job will have far more to do with unions like the SEIU than with national security, they tend to shy away from the job.

Senator Jim DeMint pointed out in January, the nomination of Erroll Southers as TSA chief was intended to usher in collective bargaining for screeners.

Mar 31, 2010

That Tiger Woods chose Augusta National to stage his return to golf is in itself an admission that, for the first time in his career, winning the Masters isn't his priority.

At least that's the conventional wisdom.

If he really wanted a fifth green jacket, the smart money says, he would've played a warm-up tournament.

Most of the savvy golf followers believe Woods chose the Masters because it's the safest place for him to begin what is sure to be a difficult comeback.

The media won't roll over at his Monday press conference but neither is he likely to be savaged with embarrassing questions about sexting porn queens.

The Masters is the only tournament where writers and photographers aren't allowed inside the ropes, giving Woods more breathing room than he would've gotten anywhere else.

He knows, too, these aren't the type of patrons who get thrown out of pubs. Augusta may be the South, but the fans at the Masters aren't rednecks: they're genteel folks who sip lemonade on porches, far too well-mannered to make a guest feel unwelcome.

On the other hand, how much patience will those in the gallery have if Tiger duffs his way through the tournament? They didn’t pay a couple of hundred or more to watch Woods shoot bogeys.

Just in case there happens to be few boisterous rednecks in the gallery intent on heckling, security will have them out on their ear before they can utter the second “boo.”

The 11 House Democrats led by Rep. Bart Stupak (pictured) who dropped their opposition to health care reform mere hours before the final vote, have requested 3.4 billion dollars in earmarks!

Since the health care reform push hit its final stretch, numerous sweeteners for lawmakers' districts and states have been found inside the package. Earmark requests are made outside of the health care bill, making them a bit more difficult to link to any vote-trading. But it is precisely that kind of tricky-to-catch deal-making that Republican Sen. Tom Coburn said he and other GOP senators would be monitoring for months to come.

Below is a list of the cash payoff amounts to the Stupak 11.

Rep. Jerry Costello of Illinois.: $1,418.7 million ($256.4 million in 2010)

Rep. Solomon Ortiz of Texas: $618 million ($726.1 million in 2010)

Stupak of Michigan: $578.9 million

Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio: $294 million ($305.7 million in 2010)

Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania: $236.8 million ($54 million in 2010)

Rep. James Oberstar of Minnesota.: $207 million ($226 million in 2010)

Rep. Brad Ellsworth of Indiana.: $115.4 million ($82.3 million in 2010)

Rep. Charles Wilson of Ohio: $84 million ($62.3 million in 2010)

Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania.: $67.1 million

Rep. Steve Driehaus of Ohio: $33.2 million

Rep. Joseph Donnelly of Indiana: $19.8 million ($11.65 million in 2010)

A value-added tax is a fee that is assessed against businesses by a government at various stages in the production of goods or services -- usually any time a product is resold or value is added to it.

For tax purposes, value is added whenever the value of a product increases as a result of the application of a company's factors of production, such as labor and equipment.

The tax must be paid by every company that handles a product during its transition from raw materials to finished goods.

For example, tax is charged when a manufacturer sells to a wholesaler and again when a wholesaler sells to a retailer.

On the surface a value added tax may sound innocent enough but when implemented, it will change the price of goods and services significantly.

The worst part of a value added tax is that it is a regressive tax, meaning the poor pay more, as a percentage of their income, than the rich.

The fear that Obama will impose a value added tax is very real. He must find some way to pay for everything from the disastrous ‘cash for clunkers’ to the multitude of bailouts. It’s the pork laden ObamaCare and the costly bribes it took to get it passed that will bring down his financial house of cards without a value added tax.

Mar 30, 2010

Fortune Valley casino in Central City, Colorado has refused to honor a $42 million slot machine jackpot saying it was a machine malfunction.

When Louise Chavez looked at the jackpot total on the slot machine she was playing at the Fortune Valley casino in Central City, she couldn’t believe her eyes. The machine indicated that she'd won $42 million.

The elation didn’t last long. A few minutes later, casino officials told her the machine had malfunctioned and she didn't win anything.

"Everyone who sits in front of a slot machine is well aware of what the top prize is," said Don Burmania, communications director at the state Gaming Division.

"In this case the top prize was $215,000. So it wasn't in the realm of possibility for anyone to expect to win $42.9 million on that machine."

Her brother, who asked that we not use his name, told 7NEWS that investigators need to get to the bottom of the dispute.

“If it was a legitimate malfunction, the company should be able to prove it and not just claim it was a malfunction to avoid having to pay the jackpot amount,” he said.

The machine was sent to a private lab for analysis.

This isn’t the first time there’s been a malfunction with a slot machine in Colorado.

A woman who thought that she’d won a $164 million jackpot at the Canyon Casino in Black Hawk in August of 2008, was also told it was a machine malfunction.

In the Fortune Valley incident, the casino offered to give Ms. Chavez the $23 she spent on slots that day, a free night's lodging and a free buffet.

Parts of Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska and Idaho may be in store for costly grasshopper infestations this summer.

Grasshoppers are found across the United States, but outbreaks of pest species are most common in the Plains and Western states.

"They're grass eaters," said Tom Wright, a rancher near Newcastle in northeast Wyoming about 20 miles from the South Dakota border. "They'll eat the leaves and leave the stem. And they will eat the stems finally.

"When they're really thick, people say they'll eat T-shirts on a clothesline," he said as he recalled a time in the mid-1980s when the grasshoppers were so thick that you couldn't put your hand on the shady side of a fence post without squashing one.

Yes, there is a lot of quacking as the ducks are back at Duckomenta II as a new entries mimic the works of the masters.

The ducks are back at Neuhardenberg, Germany, which is called “Duckburg” during this event.

Following the Neuhardenberg exhibition in 2003, they traveled the world, were celebrated wherever they went and have now returned to their place of departure to show and astound their many new colleagues at Neuhardenberg.

The displays opened in March of this year in Neuhardenberg, Brandenburg, Germany. Duckomenta viewing will continue through June 13, 2010.

Canada's Aleksandra Wozniak eyes the ball as she plays Croatia's Petra Martic during their second round match of the French Open tennis tournament at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris, Thursday, May 28, 2009.

CNN continued what has become a precipitous decline in ratings for its prime-time programs in the first quarter of 2010, with its main hosts losing almost half their viewers in a year.

The trend in news ratings for the first three months of this year is all up for one network, the Fox News Channel, which enjoyed its best quarter ever in ratings, and down for both MSNBC and CNN.

CNN has long regarded Anderson Cooper as the strongest host at CNN. Yet the New York Times report says his show has suffered badly.

For the quarter, Cooper dropped 42 percent in viewers and 46 percent among the 25-to-54-year-old audience that the news channels use for their sales to advertisers.

We have long said that Anderson Cooper is newscastings answer to cold oatmeal. According to his drop in ratings, a host of others must feel the same way.

The Times report says that CNN’s programs are led by hosts “not aligned with any partisan point of view,” which is not true.

During most of the 1990’s, CNN was known by many as the Clinton News Network for the way they under reported anything negative about Bill Clinton - especially the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the subsequent impeachment proceedings.

The New York Times report is here. Recent cable news viewership numbers can be found here.

Millions of white men who voted for Barack Obama are walking away from the Democratic Party, and it appears increasingly likely that they'll take the midterms elections in November with them. Their departure could well lead to a GOP landslide on a scale not seen since 1994.

For more than three decades before the 2008 election, no Democrat president had won a majority of the electorate. In part, that was because of low support -- never more than 38 percent -- among white male voters.

That all changed with Obama. He not only won a majority of all people voting, but also pulled in 41 percent of white male voters.

Beginning in June of this year we will no longer link to reports in the London Times (in the UK it is simply called “The Times.”

Why? The Times will begin charging for the privilege of looking at their web editions.

We have no quarrel with the decision to charge for their online content. It’s just that we can’t afford to pay thirty some dollars each to the dozens and dozens of newspaper websites we link to each year.

Rupert Murdoch is chairman and CEO of News Corp. owner of The Times.

News Corp. is the world's second-largest media conglomerate. Included in the holdings of News Corp. are Fox News, Wall Street Journal, and New York Post.

Can charging for Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Fox News online content be far behind?